Postscript

The Prolific Activism of Urvashi Vaid

Vaid, a legendary organizer in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement, had an unerring sense of injustice and the overwhelming need to redress it.
Urvashi Vaid executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force raises a sign over her head as she...
Urvashi Vaid is pictured in 1990, protesting President George H. W. Bush’s approach to the AIDS epidemic.Photograph by Dennis Cook / AP / Shutterstock

In 1992, Urvashi Vaid, a thirty-three-year-old Indian American lesbian activist, was campaigning for the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association to be included in the annual India Day Parade in New York City. Vaid went to the Queens office of one of the parade organizers to make her case. As she told the story, the organizer claimed that the reasons the association had been turned away had nothing to do with homophobia. As evidence, he offered—and, at this point, Vaid would turn on a distinctly Indian English pronunciation, “an Indian woman is the head of all the gays.” Vaid was so confused that the man had to repeat his claim. She realized that he was, unknowingly, talking about her.

Vaid, who died of cancer on May 14th, in Manhattan, at the age of sixty-three, wasn’t the head of all the gays, but only because that job does not exist. She was, almost certainly, the most prolific L.G.B.T.Q. organizer in history. For a decade, she was affiliated with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force), where she served as the executive director from 1989 to 1992—the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She started the Creating Change conference, an annual activist gathering and a training ground for young L.G.B.T.Q. organizers, and, in conjunction with it, the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, a network of progressive religious leaders. She started LPAC, the first lesbian political-action committee; a think tank called Justice Work; the Donors of Color Network; the National L.G.B.T.Q. Anti-Poverty Action Network; and the National L.G.B.T./H.I.V. Criminal Justice Working Group. She co-founded the American LGBTQ+ Museum of History and Culture, which was inaugurated in New York City last year. She served on the board of the A.C.L.U. and chaired the board of the political arm of Planned Parenthood. She raised millions for L.G.B.T.Q. causes and, in consecutive five-year stints with the Ford Foundation and the Arcus Foundation, allocated millions more.